Jaffe Family

There are two distinct time periods involving this family. First there is an earlier history which however does easily not connect with a more modern one. The earliest members are often referred to as being ‘of Dampierre’ in France. Then there is a gap between about from 1234 to 1325 after which the line picks up again with Meir ben Israel Jaffe-Soffer. On this page we will deal with the more recent family first and then take a look at the earlier one.

One thing is certain and that is Ogla / Abigail Jaffe married Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen of Padua and Venice (ca. 1521 – 1597) and from this marriage we can trace a direct descent down to Moritz Reis.

The question that we cannot answer with any certainty is: who is the father of Abigail Jaffe the wife of Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen (1521 – 25 March 1597) ? Given her husband’s dates we can assume Abigail was born around 1520.  Since Abigail’s son Saul Wahl was born around 1541 the year 1520 would seem reasonable.

Without providing any specifics, Edward Gelles says that Abigail Jaffe was the cousin of Mordecai Jaffe (1530-1612) (aka Mordekhai Zinger ben Moshe Jaffe). If so, the father of Mordecai Jaffe, Avraham ben Joseph Jaffe (1513 – 1564), would have to be one or other of the brothers of Abigail’s father and so the question then becomes: who were Avraham ben Joseph Jaffe’s brothers?

According to GENI there were two: Eliezer ben Joseph Jaffe, of Mantua (1515 – ) and Yitzhak Ben Yoseph Jaffe (Askenazi) (Jaffe) of Prague (1513 – 1564). Each of these are then supposed to be possible father’s of Abigail born circa 1520!

The father of these three brothers – Mordecai, Eliezer, and Yitzhak – was Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham Jaffe, of Prague (1495 – 1563). If we assume Abigail was born around 1520, her father is unlikely to have been any of the brothers of Mordechai’s – neither Eliezer nor Yitzhak – as they would have been about five years old when Abigail was born and so she is more likely to have been a daughter of Joseph ben Abraham Jaffe as opposed to his granddaughter and therefore a sister of the three Jaffe brothers.

The descent line from the Jaffe family down to Reis is as follows where >> is a child of and == is a marriage.

Rabbi Meir ben Israel Jaffe-Soffer (ca 1325 – ca 1389) >>. Israel Jaffe Soffer (1360 – ca. 1440) >> Eliezer ben Israel Jaffe (ca. 1400 – ca. 1480) >> Moses ben Eliezer Jaffe of Bologna (? – 1480) == Margolioth bat Samuel HaLevi >> Abraham ben Moses Jaffe of Bohemia ( ? – 1533) >> Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham Jaffe, of Prague (1495 – 1563) >> Abigail Ogla Jaffe (ca. 1520 – 1594) == Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen of Padua and Venice (ca. 1521 – 1597) >> Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen (1545 – 1617)  ==  Deborah Drucker >> Meir Wahl Katzenellenbogen (died 1631)  ==  Hinde, daughter of Pinchas Halevi Horowitz  >>  >>  Baila / Beila Katzenellenbogen == Jonah / Yonah I Frankel-Teomim (1596 – 1669)  >>  Ezekiel Joshua Feivel Teomim| (ca. 1637 – ca. 1726) == Pearl Leib (1640 – 1710)  >>  Chaim Jonah Frankel-Teomim == Sarah Oppenheim >> Magdelene Genendel Frankel-Teomim (1713 – 1778) ==  Simon Isaac Bondi (1711 – 1773) >> Jonas Bondi (1732 – 1765) == Bella / Belle Schifra  >>  Clara / Caroline Bondi (1760-1829)  == Koppel Loeb of Bamberg >> Moises Loeb / Moritz Reis (1782 – 1855) == Émilie Bickartt (1784 ) >> Jonas Reis (1809 – 1877) == Marian Samuel (1825 – 1900) >> REIS FAMILY

There were a number of renowned members of this family such as:

ABRAHAM JAFFE OF BOHEMIA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Moses ben Eliezer Jaffe of Bologna (Hebrew: רבי משה בן אליעזר יפה מבולוניה; died 1480) was a prominent Polish-Italian rabbi.

He was born in Lesser Poland around 1400 to Eliezer ben Meir Jaffe, a German-born rabbi and scholar. In his early years he married Margolioth bat Samuel HaLevi, who is described as being a very learned woman. In the mid-15th-century he was removed to Bologna, Italy, where he served as the city’s Av Bet Din and is mentioned in the “Shalshelet ha-Ḳabbalah” manuscript at St. Petersburg. Moses died in Bologna around 1480. His son is Abraham of Bohemia.

Abraham ben Moses Jaffe of Bohemia (Hebrew: אברהם בן משה יפה מבוהמיה; d. 1535) also known by his Latin name “‘Abraham Judaeus Bohemus” was a very prominent 16th-century Bohemian Jewish banker, tax collector, money lender and Court Jew who later moved to Poland and served as the Prefect of the Council of Four Lands from 1514 to 1518.

Born in the mid-15th-century in Prague, Czech Republic. His father Moses Jaffe of Bologna was a Polish rabbi and paternal descendant of Elhanan Jaffe of Dampierre. His mother Margolioth bat Samuel HaLevi was considered to be an extremely learned woman, to the point that some of her descendants adopted the second surname Margolioth, such as Abraham’s brother Jacob Margolioth-Jaffe of Nuremberg.

Early in his carrier, Abraham amassed a great fortune, which he later lent out to King Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Around 1495, he emigrated to Kazimierz, Krakow, Poland, where he soon became a banker to Alexander Jagiellon and later King Sigismund I of Poland, with whom he later developed a close relationship. In 1512 King Sigismund issued a decree notifying his subjects that he had appointed Abraham, prefect over them, and that one of Abraham’s duties was to collect the Jewish poll tax from communities in Great Poland and Mazovia and to deliver the same into the king’s treasury.

From 1514, he also collected the Jewish poll tax in Lesser Poland, performing this function until 1518. It was also around this time that Abraham became involved in commerce, holding a trading post in Lwów, where he owned a house in the Jewish quarter, given to him by the king. Abraham’s duties caused him to come into conflict with the Kraków provincial voivod and the Jewish communities of that city which caused him to suffer financially due to a ban that was placed on him by the Jewish community. This was mostly in respect to an order by Sigismund which mandated the Jews of Krakow to pay Abraham 200 florins, “for defending them against accusations brought up against them.”

The Polish Jews were not pleased with their new Bohemian prefect, who had become very powerful. The king ordered all the Jews of Poland, and especially the rabbis, to respect the liberties and privileges granted to Abraham, and not to encroach upon them by excommunication or in any other way. For these privileges, Abraham paid an annual personal tax of 20 ducats. In 1518, after the intercession of Emperor Maximilian, Sigismund removed Abraham from the jurisdiction of the Council of Four Lands under threat of fines. The king also dismissed all accusations against Abraham, freed him from taxes paid by all other Jews, and allowed him freedom of commerce and banking in all Poland. In 1533, Sigismund removed Abraham from the jurisdiction of the royal officials and placed him under the jurisdiction of Queen Sforza. Nearing the end of his life he moved to Lwów, where he died around 1535.

THE MUCH EARLIER JAFFE FAMILY

Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry >> Isaac ben Samuel of Dampier (ca. 1120 – ca. 1189) == Channa de Vitry Hanale Lady of the Vines >> Elhanan Jaffe of Dampier (d. 1184) == Shonlin Kalonymos >> Rabbi Shmuel Samuel Marx Jaffe (1186 – 1234) == Esther >> ? >> ? etc.

Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry (Hebrew: שמחה בן שמואל מויטרי; died 1105) was a French Talmudist of the 11th and 12th centuries, a pupil of Rashi’s, and the compiler of Machzor Vitry. He lived in Vitry-le-François.

Machzor Vitry contains decisions and rules concerning religious practice, besides responsa by Rashi and other authorities, both contemporary and earlier. The work is cited as early as the 12th century in Jacob Tam’s Sefer ha-Yashar. The son of Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry was:

Isaac ben Samuel the Elder (c. 1120 – c. 1189), also known as the Ri ha-Zaken (Hebrew: ר”י הזקן), HaRav Yitzhak Ben Shmuel Jaffe, HaZaken of Dampierre, was a French tosafist and Biblical commentator. Isaac of Dampierre married Channa de Vitry Hanale Lady of Vines whose father was Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry.

Isaac settled at Dampierre and founded there a flourishing and well-attended school. It is said that he had sixty pupils, each of whom, besides being generally well grounded in Talmud, knew an entire treatise by heart, so that the whole Talmud was stored in the memories of his pupils. As he lived under Philip Augustus, at whose hands the Jews suffered much, Isaac prohibited the buying of confiscated Jewish property, and ordered that any that was so bought be restored to its original owner.

Isaac’s tosafot completed the commentary of Rashi on the Talmud. He also compiled and edited with great erudition all the preceding explanations to Rashi’s commentary. His first collection was entitled Tosefot Yeshanim, which, however, was afterward revised and developed. He is quoted on almost every page of the Tosafot, and in various works, especially in the Sefer ha-Terumah of his pupil Baruch ben Isaac of Worms, and in the Or Zarua of Isaac ben Moses

Isaac b. Samuel was spoken of as “the sainted master” a term generally given to martyrs, and he may have been killed in pogrom known as Baalei HaTosafotat at the same time as his son Elhanan (1184).

Elhanan Jaffe ben Isaac of Dampierre was the son of Isaac ben Samuel the Elder of Dampierre (c. 1115 – c. 1184) and Channa de Vitry Hanale Lady of Vines and and the great-grandson of Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry. Through his maternal grandmother, Elhanan was the great-grandson of Meir ben Samuel and thus the great-great-grandson of the biblical commentator, Rashi who claimed to be a 33rd-generation descendant of Johanan HaSandlar who was from the Davidic line.

In the mid-13th-century this earlier Jaffe family emigrated to Heidelberg, Germany, where they occupied several prominent rabbinic positions. Following the rise of antisemitism in Germany, the majority of the family emigrated to parts of Eastern Europe.

Because there is no firm link between these early Jaffe family members and the later ones, this is reflected by the ? in the chart at the bottom of this page. Below, is the gravestone of Abigail Jaffe:

_____	______	______	______	______	______	______	______	____	____	____
										/	— Shmuel
									/	— Simha of VITRY
								/	— Shmuel of DAMPIERRE
							/	— Yitzhaq JAFFE  (1115?? – 1184?)
							|	\	/	— Meier ben SHMUEL   +
							|	\	— Hana bat MEIR  (1088? – ?)
							/		\	— Yocheved bat RASHI   +
						/	— Elhanan (ben YIZHAK) JAFFE ha-KODESH
						|	\		/	— Yom Tov de FALAIS   +
						|	|	/	— Yehuda ben YOMTOV
						/	\	— Elvina bat YEHUDA RIVAN
					/	— Shmuel JAFFE  (1205?? – ?)
					|	\				/	— Yehoshua ben ABUN   +
					|	|			/	— Yitzhaq ben YEHOSHUA
					|	|		/	— Eliezer ha-GADOL
					|	|	/	— Yitzhaq ha-ZAKEN  (? – 1096?)
					|	\	— (Miss) WER
					|		\		/	— Yekutiel ben MOSHE   +								=]
					|		|	/	— Moses of SPEYER
					/		\	— (Miss) SPEYER
				/	— Moshe (ben SAMUEL) JAFFE  (1250?? – ?)
			/	— Meir I. JAFFE
		/	— Eliezer JAFFE
	/	— (NN) … (NN) JAFFE
	/		/ ( poss. some missing generations)
/	— Moshe JAFFE  (1435? – 1480 Bologna, Italy)
/
– Abraham (JAFFE) of BOHEMIA
\